Scientists have been making nanoparticles for more than two decades in two-dimensional sheets, three-dimensional crystals and random clusters. But they have never been able to get a sheet of nanoparticles to curve or fold ...

Researchers from North Carolina State University and Brown University have found that nanoscale wires (nanowires) made of common semiconductor materials have a pronounced anelasticity - meaning that the wires, when bent, ...

A team from the RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science, along with collaborators from several Japanese institutions, have successfully produced pairs of spin-entangled electrons and demonstrated, for the first time, that ...

The tiny hairs of Saharan silver ants possess crucial adaptive features that allow the ants to regulate their body temperatures and survive the scorching hot conditions of their desert habitat. According to a new research ...

Soft matter encompasses a broad swath of materials, including liquids, polymers, gels, foam and - most importantly - biomolecules. At the heart of soft materials, governing their overall properties and capabilities, are the ...

As microchip feature dimensions approach atomic scale, it becomes formidably difficult to measure their size and shape. According to the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors, within the next couple of years ...

Electron microscope

An electron microscope is a type of microscope that uses a particle beam of electrons to illuminate a specimen and create a highly-magnified image. Electron microscopes have much greater resolving power than light microscopes that use electromagnetic radiation and can obtain much higher magnifications of up to 2 million times, while the best light microscopes are limited to magnifications of 2000 times. Both electron and light microscopes have resolution limitations, imposed by the wavelength of the radiation they use. The greater resolution and magnification of the electron microscope is because the wavelength of an electron; its de Broglie wavelength is much smaller than that of a photon of visible light.

The electron microscope uses electrostatic and electromagnetic lenses in forming the image by controlling the electron beam to focus it at a specific plane relative to the specimen. This manner is similar to how a light microscope uses glass lenses to focus light on or through a specimen to form an image.